


Up Against The Wall

by Anonymous



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom
Genre: Minecraft Manhunt, i’m a sucker for alternate PoV fics sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27628792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Bad misses the jump.———Or, Bad getting a front row seat to some of the lasting effects of Dream’s no good very bad week.
Relationships: nope
Comments: 12
Kudos: 565
Collections: Anonymous Fics





	Up Against The Wall

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Run and Go](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25388797) by [Numanum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Numanum/pseuds/Numanum). 



> So this was written at a terrible hour of the morning in a fit of pure inspiration because Run and Go is just delightful. As a warning this will *not* make sense without reading that fic first, so go check it out and show it all the love! 
> 
> This is just a short and simple alternate PoV of the most recent chapters because I’m simply a sucker for that. All of this is speculation and may have some wrong details because of the aforementioned dumb hour.

Bad misses the jump.

It’s hard to make peace with your death when you barely have time to register that you are, in fact, going to die and in a particularly unpleasant way at that too, but what else is he gonna do? Its not like there’s any handholds he can grab onto, no place in the lava lake that he could possibly survive falling into, and even if Sapnap or George were crazy enough to jump in after him, it would only kill them with him. He screws his eyes tight shut against the dry hot air. Tries to think of something nice, but the only thing he can think of is Dream, sprinting ahead of them, scared and alone. There’s a shout above, some commotion, probably Sapnap and George yelling for him, and then there’s a sharp impact against his chest, and a split second later there’s a brutal collision with something big enough to knock the wind out of his lungs and force his eyes open.

It’s Dream.

They’re both falling faster now, Dream latched onto Bad’s torso with one arm, other arm free and doing something Bad can’t see, and Bad takes a moment to wonder hysterically if he somehow knocked Dream down with his jump, because there’s no way that this other version of Dream, the one that faked his own death, the one that won’t stop running, there’s no way he jumped in after him. Dream loops his free arm around Bad and throws his weight to the side, making everything go dizzy and upside-down, so close to the lava that Bad can feel it, and as the heat bakes into him he thinks maybe Dream just wanted to take one of them down with him when he went. Then the air goes dry and flat for a second, and he’s still falling but there’s a ledge beneath him and Dream. They hit, hard, and Bad swears he can hear something creak under his elbow on impact. He screeches “Dream!” and tries to shift his weight get his arm off of Dream’s ribcage, and as he struggles to unpin his hand from under Dream it drags across Dreams back, and Dream goes still. 

He stays still for a very long moment.

That moment is broken as Dream immediately starts thrashing and Bad can only pin him down, trying to keep him on this ledge that he’s not entirely sure how he got onto, but he knows Dream saved him. Dream, who held his hand and held chickens and woke up scared and ran and Bad has never seen him run towards someone before. He must have. He must have made the decision to follow Bad down, knowing he might die, for a slim chance to save them both. And Bad had started this hunt calling him a monster. Bad had though he was trying to kill him on the way down.

The thought makes him rip his hands back, faintly disgusted in his past self, he looks up to see Sapnap and George chipping a way down out of the wall. He sits up and Dream is still struggling, but he can handle it. Bad takes a steadying breath as Sapnap drops down to the ledge, looking about as angry as Bad’s ever seen him.

“You almost killed Bad!” he yells, and his fists are balled and Sapnap’s shaking, from adrenaline and fear but it’s all coming out as anger,  
  
“I’m getting really tired of almost dying while chasing you-”

“Then stop.”  
  
Dream sounds not great. Like there’s ash in his throat. Its low and scratchy and Bad just wants to hear Dream’s carefree wheeze of a laugh again.  
  
“We’re not doing that, you know we can’t,”  
All the anger leeches out from Sapnap in an instant. His shoulders drop, and Bad wants to shake Dream, wants to make Dream understand that they’re not going to leave him alone, not going to let him run away, that they want him safe, somewhere they can watch his back without chasing him down. Underneath him, Dream stops fighting. It’s not the wrong-stillness that had happened when they hit the ledge, so Bad counts that as a tentative win. He can hear him gasp in a few more lungfuls of ashy dry air before managing to reply to Sapnap, voice barely breaking a whisper.

“Please. Please, just stop,”

He looks tired. He looks like he wants to lie down here and not get back up again until the three of them have left. He looks like he’s about to give up completely. Bad shifts his weight, ready to dive after Dream if he goes for the edge, and in that moment, Dream rears up, shoving him back. Bad hits the wall hard and, grabbing for something to steady himself on, finds the climbing notches in the wall. Sapnap and George both back up as well, getting out of range instinctively, and its only once Bad’s stable and safe that his brain processes the ground groaning under Dream’s feet, fissures racing from the edges, and Bad’s trying to think of anything to do that isn’t just watching Dream fall to the same fate he narrowly stole Bad away from when the ground splinters apart and Dream lunges for the wall, scaling it with shaking arms. George is shouting something behind Bad, but his eyes are stuck on the crumbled non-ground where he’d been pinning Dream. How many life debts does this make? Two? More? Have there been other times Dream’s saved him? 

He snaps out of it, lunging up the wall, yelling with Sapnap and George for Dream to wait, to stay put, and as Dream scrambles over the top he leaves behind shiny patches of red blood on the red rock of the nether. He’s only a few feet from the edge when they clear the top, roughly kneeling, teeth grit, scowl firmly in place and Bad follows that death glare to the palms of his hands.

“Oh, goodness. Your- Your hands, Dream,” Bad gasps, and gently, gently grabs the wrists of the mangled mess Dream’s hands have become, pulling them closer to his eyes, squinting at burns and rot and thick slashes like they’ll tell him what happened if he just looks at them right. Its not pretty. He peels away the ruins of the gloves from Dream’s hand, careful, gentle as he can, trying to see more even as he never wants to see Dream’s hands like this ever again. George, hovering next to him, looking just as sick and horrified as Bad feels, zeroes in on something. 

“Is- is that wood? Why does he have splinters?” George turns his attention away from his hands to look down at Dream, “why do you have splinters?”  
Its another layer to the destruction Dream’s put himself through, another point where the three of them have failed him, and Bad doesn’t blame George for looking away.

He almost wishes he hadn’t, because George say, faintly,  
“Something’s wrong with his back-” and Bad still hasn’t gotten a sense of where he should even start working with the hands but a back injury could be bad, a back injury could be from slamming into a ledge with the full weight of another person on top of you, and so he looks up to see George reaching out, transfixed and horrified at whatever he’s seeing. His fingers barely brush whatever it is before Dream is a flurry of desperate motion, hands slamming into the ground in a way that Bad knows must hurt, knows must aggravate everything about what’s wrong with those hands, and they’re leaving more shiny red streaks behind but Bad isn’t looking at those. He‘s stuck staring at the metal running through an old scar across Dream’s back. 

“That’s gold, holy shit- that’s gold-” 

Dream runs. Bad can’t find it within himself to blame him.


End file.
